The HMS Hood did a lot to make the Bismark famous, really. The odd thing is that the shot that blew up the Hood MAY have originated with the Prince Eugen that was with the Bismark.
The Hood was a large battle cruiser that lacked armor in key spots. I was musing that the USS Constitution was a kind of battle cruiser of its day, fast enough to run from a real "ship of the line" and armed well enough to dominate other frigates.
The German ship Tirpitz is less famous but had a larger impact on the course of the war just by "being".
The British had a lot of emotion invested in the
Hood. She was built before the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, which--among other provisions--limited the size (weight, actually, but it's somewhat the same thing) of capital ships. The battleships built after than were known as "treaty ships," and they were less than satisfactory. They had to give up something--armor, armament, or propulsion--to stay within the treaty limits. You got battleships like
Nelson and
Rodney, where there were no main guns aft of the superstructure, which was located about 2/3 of the way back to the stern. They were jokingly referred to as
Nelsol and
Rodnol, as they sort of resembled a class of fleet oilers.
Back to
Hood, Johnny Horton didn't invent calling her "The Mighty
Hood." That was how the British saw her--she was the largest battle cruiser ever built, the Pride of the Fleet. As you mentioned, it was believed that she was fast enough to escape from any ship she couldn't outgun. Analysis of Jutland cast doubt on that belief, as Beatty's battle cruisers did not fare well in that fight, and
Hood's armor was upgraded between the wars. She was scheduled for a major rebuild in 1941 to correct several shortcomings when WWII broke out. She never got the upgrade.
Nice comparison to the USS
Constitution and her fellow big frigates.
The Germans had had a different philosophy in building battle cruisers before WWI. Instead of reducing armor protection, they reduced the size of the main guns. These fared better at Jutland than the British ones. They were badly shot up, but none of them blew up like three of Beatty's did.
WWI did a lot to kill enthusiasm for battle cruisers, and several of them--some already built, others still under construction--were converted to aircraft carriers.
Lexington and
Saratoga were the American examples of this.
Nazi Germany built the
Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau before WWII. They were sometimes called fast battleships, but they were really battle cruisers.